The liberal ones, if they're really liberal, are not typical American Christians, they're an anomaly and a tiny minority.
The conservative ones aren't totally stupid usually. They're just like the Scientologists: they don't talk about the really crazy stuff around outsiders. And most of them probably *don't* want people imprisoned or executed, yet. They want the laws changed so they're theologically based, out of their favorite Bible passages. Then, of course they're going to want people imprisoned when they start breaking these laws; who *wouldn't* want someone imprisoned who breaks laws? After that, when they've accumulated enough power, they're eventually going to want to execute people who don't follow along. Just look at how little time passed between Germany having a nice, peaceful, liberal Republic (the Weimar Republic), and going from that to the SA and SS and death camps. It doesn't take much to get people to back those kinds of actions. And America's Christians are ripe for it too: look at how they've built up such a huge a persecution complex lately. They all think they're being *persecuted* because gay people are being allowed to get married now. The Germans thought they were being persecuted too (and at least they were actually right: they were being harshly and unfairly punished for losing WWI and their economy was suffering for it), and look what it drove them to do. The exact same thing could easily happen with America's Christians, taking out their frustrations on some minorities or other groups they decide to hate.
Why? To provide an almost invisible disincentive to inadvertent consumption of soda.
Yes, that's the whole idea. If you're served a giant cup of soda, you're likely to drink the whole thing. Whereas if you are served a smaller cup, you'll probably drink all that too, but you're not as likely to bother getting a refill, so you end up drinking half as much. It's basic human psychology.
Sorry if I wasn't clear before: "banning sodas" was a misstatement, they banned large cup sizes.
And then don't pay her. Pay can be withheld for failing to perform functions in the Job Description.
Maybe, but getting the local government to do that is another matter. The Judge doesn't have the unilateral power to force the county to withhold her paychecks. He does have the power to jail her for contempt of court, which she clearly is guilty of. Why shouldn't she go to jail for that? Everyone else goes to jail for it.
And even if they did withhold pay, she'd still go to the job and act illegally. The law of the land is that she must issue licenses to gay couples (as well as straight ones, who she was also refusing to serve!). Why should she be allowed to thumb her nose at the law indefinitely?
It's simple: if part of your job requires you to do something you find immoral, then you need to find yourself a new job. No one is entitled to any particular job.
And I thought conservatives were against make-work programs.... I guess only when they're for Christians.
What would you say to someone whose moral compass requires them to refuse service to black people? Or to refuse a cab ride to a drunk person? Or to sell pork even though your store carries it?
Right, the only motivation anyone has for wanting society to go along with their ideas is religion. That's why we have people who want to ban you from ordering a large soda, smoking a cigarette, homeschooling your kids, using gender pronouns, etc.
Oh please; there's rational arguments for all of those (and rational arguments against them too). Banning sodas comes from an interest in improving public health, same with smoking. Moreso with smoking because of the effects of secondhand smoke, which affects people who didn't choose to harm their bodies. Being against homeschooling is basically the same, the idea being the children won't get a proper education or will be indoctrinated into a crazy religion; the opposite side of course is the idea that parents should have the authority to decide what's best for their kids rather than the State, the State's schools are frequently lousy and don't live up to the promise, not all homeschoolers are wacky fundamentalists, etc. Opposition to gender pronouns comes from wanting to treat everyone equally and not have "institutional sexism"; the argument against is that they don't believe that gender pronouns have such an effect, that changing is impractical, etc.
There are plenty of societies which have realized religious beliefs are a problem and have restricted them. Which of those do you find more free and preferable to the one you live in right now?
Well, ISIS's territory hasn't restricted certain religious beliefs, and it's a hellhole. All the Muslim countries have religion built into society and government, and they suck to live in and have terrible standards of living on average. Meanwhile, western Europe has to some extent, and it has the highest standard of living in the world (especially Sweden, which is probably the least religious).
It's not just ships, it's any organization. Someone has to be in charge. You can't have an organization where everyone can just do whatever they want; nothing would get done.
The problem with religion is that you don't have to have any kind of rational justification for your position, just "it's in the Bible" (with some out-of-context quote).
When you eliminate religion this way, then any position you take has to be justified with some kind of rational philosophy. Take gay marriage for example: what's the reason to not allow it? It's usually religious: "the Bible says it's sinful in this passage here". That's not a justification based on rationality. The only other reason given is "it's unnatural", but that's just plain stupid, because homosexuality has been observed in countless animals, plus we don't live naturally anyway. Driving a car is "unnatural", so should we stop that too? Typing on a computer is as well. But religious thought promotes this kind of illogical thinking.
Even the ancient Greeks were knowledgeable about debating using rational principles instead of just blindly pointing at some book, so we've taken a huge step backwards since then.
I don't know about all this. Yes, it's definitely easier for people to go to a new colony in the Federation, but inhabitable worlds aren't that plentiful; they have multiple episodes about colonists getting into conflicts with others, either some beings who already inhabited the planet, or some neighboring power that had already claimed the planet as their territory. (There's the episode where Data has to convince some colonists to leave their home because the Cardassians are taking it over, due to a treaty between them and the Federation. There's also an episode where Picard's crew finds a young man who was taken by a rival power after a raid by them killed all the colonists he was with and then raised him as their own, and he doesn't want to go back to his birth family on Earth.) There's colonies which are entirely sealed in artificial habitats because the planet is inhospitable (like the one where Picard's crew finds a planet being threatened by some big asteroid's gravity, and Geordi works with a female colonist to improve the tractor beam, using technology from his VISOR, something that wouldn't happen on their world because "defective" children aren't kept there). Most of these colonies in fact seem to be renegades, not officially sanctioned by the Federation, and the Enterprise usually just stumbles over them, only finding some records about them in their archives that are decades or centuries old, with their final location and status unknown. They just go out into space somewhere and squat on a planet, and frequently it turns out it's in contested space somewhere. Some are official, but I believe I remember some talk about there being work to terraform worlds, but it's a slow process and there's only so many of them.
You were talking about *illegal* acts. Arson isn't illegal for religious reasons, it is because it is an act that harms and kills others.
It's irrelevant: the principle is exactly the same. Religionists want their religious principles to be encoded into law, even if they do harm others. Luckily western society tends to be more secular, but the government that, say, ISIS is setting up, is not like this. Christians here in America would like to have a government like that, where unbelievers are imprisoned or executed. Christians in the middle ages were exactly like this.
If you run a business that's open to the public (as opposed to a private-membership club), then you can't discriminate--it's the law. If you don't like that, you shouldn't be in business. It's no different than refusing to serve lunch to black people, or refusing to dispense live-saving medication to black people.
We're not talking about fashion, we're talking about technological devices. People get new phones because new ones have better features and are faster. Just like PCs, this is going to plateau at some point and people won't care about having the latest-and-greatest so much (or we're going to move to something else which obsoletes them, it's hard to say which). Not many people these days give a rat's ass about having the latest PC, but 15 years ago things were entirely different because there was a high rate of advancement those days. These days, PCs aren't improving much at all, except new ones are more energy-efficient. And no one's excited about new versions of Windows.
There is a simple solution to all the melodrama. Have someone fire her ass.... are alwaus calling for public servants to get fired, why not a deadbeat county clerk?
Sorry, but that's utterly impossible. Her job is an elected position; she can't be fired. She has to be impeached (or jailed for contempt, which is what happened). It's like trying to "fire" the President of the US, it can't be done.
Now why the clerk position is elected, I have absolutely no idea. It makes about as much sense as judge positions being elected.
However, there's nothing preventing this bimbo from either resigning, or allowing one of her staff to sign the things. But noooo, she refuses to do any of that, because she says she has to make a stand. She's just like the people back in the 60s who refused to allow interracial marriages.
It could be if somebody standardized things, but there is no incentive for car co's to do that.
There's no incentive because no one in their right mind wants a butt-ugly car that looks like it was slapped together with parts from a parts bin. Lots of people actually like nice aesthetics, inside and out, and that means the parts have to be designed for the car to some extent, and to look right together. Also, different companies have different ideas about how things should look, feel, and operate. Germans always want to put the headlight switch on the dashboard, for instance, and Japanese always want to put it on a stalk. It's been like this for decades, so it's not a fad.
Clearly, "the majority" wants a smartphone, even though a feature phone is "enough",
How do you figure? By that logic, a landline phone is "enough", or maybe even carrier pigeon notes are "enough". A feature phone doesn't let me do all kinds of things I can easily do on a smartphone. I can't Skype on a feature phone, among many other things. I can't even text on a feature phone (sorry, I never was any good at typing messages with 0-9 buttons). This is simply a very poor example for you to choose, because smartphones are not a luxury (any more than, say, internet access or telecommunications), they offer features and uses beyond feature phones. If you just want to talk on the phone, sure, they don't do that all that much better, but that's only one of their functions, and personally, one I don't even use that much.
Scarcity, like death, is an enduring reality.
Not really, it depends on what it is. Real estate is the one scarcity that is really enduring. Things like phones can be made in automated factories using cheap materials (we're talking about an interstellar society here; getting raw materials isn't a problem for them). As for holodecks, you're only looking at one small aspect of this society, life aboard a semi-military starship. There's only so much space on a ship, especially one that has to serve military purposes at times and so its design must be constrained for that. No one forced the crewmembers to join Starfleet; there's likely tons of holodecks back on their home planets, where space is much more plentiful.
If you want real-world examples of people being happy with "enough", how about this: you can have any smartphone you want, and as many of them as you want (assume you can't just re-sell them and pocket the cash). You'll probably pick some high-end model, but how many do you want? Probably just one, or maybe two so you can have a spare in case you break the first one. Would you take hundreds of them? Doubtful; what would you do with them? Collect them? Another example: food. If you can have any food you want, and as much as you want, you'll probably take the finest available, but you can only eat so much at a time, so there's no point in grabbing more. So if you have a replicator that can make any food you want, you're still only going to use it a few times a day.
And so much was often unexplored, they had Geordi with his VISOR, but did they explore any other cybernetics? Other than maybe a few episodes with DATA, not really, and even less often with the Borg, though I admit I did not see much Voyager.
No, there was a very obvious anti-cybernetic bent to Star Trek actually: the Borg were shown as evil and inhuman, taking normal humans (or human-like people) and taking away their humanity with the cybernetic implants (many of which seemed to serve little purpose and be gratuitous). Geordi was the only person ever shown with an obvious implant, and it was only because their technology didn't have anything better for replacing his lost vision. Later on (in the movie ST8) he's shown with new eye implants which replace the VISOR, as technology has apparently improved to give him artificial eyes that look pretty close to human eyes. Picard had an artificial heart (which was show in one episode, where he gets stabbed), though that's not obvious from the outside. Basically, the philosophical stance they have is that Federation medical technology mostly only serves to restore humans to normal human function, and that's it; enhanced capabilities seem to be frowned on. So replacing a damaged heart with an artificial heart is OK, giving sight to a boy born blind is OK (and letting him see extra wavelengths seems to be permitted too), but giving people super-strength or whatever is off-limits. ST goes into this many times: with Khan, and also on Enterprise (the show) with the "Augments", and again with Dr. Bashir in DS9, the Federation opposition to genetic engineering is made quite clear: it's forbidden. Sickbay doctors are shown as figuring out how to cure all kinds of maladies (usually gained during contact with aliens), and bringing crewman back to perfect health, but any attempts at improving humans is shown as something to be avoided because there's inevitably going to be all kinds of problems. There's no mention at all of even cosmetic improvements: will Dr. Crusher give you a nose job if she's not busy? Doubtful, though the fact that all the crewmembers are highly attractive does make one wonder.
WTF? You're a fool. The first two seasons of TNG were the worst, especially the first season; crappy writing, annoying characters (Wesley, Pulaski), etc.. Seasons 3-5 were where all the classic episodes happened.
You're probably the only person who actually likes season 1 of TNG.
Yes, there are hints of communism, but note the badges and other indications of rank aboard the Enterprise. People may be equal, but some are obviously more equal.
The USSR had a military too, and people there had ranks just like any other military. That's just how militaries work. Starfleet is a military entity; their mission is largely exploration and diplomacy as well as other tasks (transporting medicines to colonies, disaster relief, etc. The US military does disaster relief from time to time too so this isn't farfetched), but a good part of their mission is military, due to multiple hostile neighboring forces (Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, etc.). Part of their mission is also political. Anyway, the point is, having ranks is part of having a military organization. Every human organization is like this to some degree; some people are leaders, others are followers, and they have some kind of hierarchy. We do this because it's the only thing that works; any time people try a commune without leaders, nothing gets done.
This is totally orthogonal to either money/wealth or equality. People can be equal under the law while still having higher or lower positions or ranks. The Enterprise Captain may have the highest rank, but that doesn't mean he can just rape his yeoman whenever he wants or eject someone from the airlock; he has to follow the law like anyone else, and if he doesn't, his subordinates are allowed to relieve him of duty and arrest him.
You're talking about technological devices. In a post-scarcity society, these things would be basically free, because there'd be no almost cost to make them. With enough automation, the amount of labor in each device would be almost nil (it's getting that way already in our factories), and with the capabilities of a starfaring civilization, the raw materials would be basically free. You're just not understanding the ramifications of a post-scarcity society.
The main things which would be scarce in such a society would be real estate (not everyone can have a beach house in Hawaii, there's only so much room), and intangible things like status and fame (which is why not everyone gets to be a starship captain). Now of course, some things do seem to be scarce in Star Trek society, such as starships and dilithium crystals. But for personal possessions, they don't. There's no reason for someone to stick with an old tricorder or communicator when a robotic factory can pump them out endlessly, unless they just really like the old one better.
At most, an author can raise some interesting questions, or show some possible outcomes, or otherwise promulgate a message. But whether anything functions, they're just making it up.
Well of course they are. It's a fictional TV show that lasts less than 50 minutes, and one of the big goals is to offer some social commentary, not to be a character study. I think it succeeds quite well in its goal.
But I've noticed something about the world today, in my observation, the ones who most strenuously protest that they are being denied their freedoms and choices are actually among those who wish to victimize others.
I feel like I'm being denied my freedom: my religion says that I should steal things whenever I feel like it, and these totally unjust anti-shoplifting laws are infringing that freedom. I'm being oppressed!!!
I wish more people would live-and-let-live today. So much culture seems to be based on denying others their own choices in how to live their lives when those choices are not victimizing anyone else.
Well the problem is obviously religion. Notice that in Star Trek, there really isn't any, except when they visit some backwards planet and there's religious nuts terrorizing people somehow. Otherwise, what rational reason is there to deny other people their own choices in how to live their lives as long as they aren't victimizing anyone? It's simple: because religionists don't like it, and don't want their choices to become popular and spread. We see that today with all the anti-gay-marriage vitriol from the Christians. They just can't stand the idea that other people are marrying who they want, so they want to shut it down and take control of it. These very same people were against interracial marriages a generation or two ago, calling it an "abomination". You'd think it'd be simple: if you don't like gay marriage, don't have one. But that's not good enough for these cuckoos, they want to make sure no one else has a marriage they disapprove of either.
BSG never had proper closure. i.e. How the fuck did StarBuck come back?? How did StarBuck's ship remains on Earth??
I thought it was pretty much implied that Starbuck was some kind of angel or otherwise just sent back by God. Remember, in the last episode, while she was talking to Lee she just disappeared after saying something about her job here being done. I'm not sure what you're talking about with her ship (it's been a while since I saw it). Gaius was indeed a great character.
Extant -- "keep throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks." Writing was horrible. Ethan (A.I.) was mostly shoved aside for Aliens.
I only saw the first 7 episodes I think. I remember something about some weirdness in the space station in Halle's flashbacks, and that's about it.
Lost seemed to jump the shark shortly after the time travel thing. Again, no closure. WTF was the smoke monster??
The was closure, of a sort (as I understand it, I never actually watched the last few seasons): they just suddenly ended it and found out they were dead all along and that this was some kind of afterlife. But yeah, very lame.
I don't remember those specific episodes, no. But at least there, you can make the case that they were working in the interests of national security; the CIA has been doing not-so-legal stuff ever since they were founded, that's their whole mission basically. But it's one thing for your government to infringe on civil liberties here and there because of national security against a very formidable foreign enemy, and another thing entirely for your local police force to blatantly infringe on civil liberties left and right just to catch some drug dealer or other low-level criminal or really just to make their lives easier because they've been taking too many steroids and they get off on beating people up.
Also, Airwolf wasn't even part of the government, it was operated by a rogue who basically got the government to look the other way in exchange for carrying out some missions for them, with the promise they'd look for his brother, and the threat that he wouldn't tell him where the helicopter was if they just grabbed him; it was kinda like outsourcing spy work.
Yes, the enemy has changed, but it's one thing for the enemy to be a foreign government that wants to destroy your government and seize control in a superpower race to establish domination and hegemony, and quite another thing for the enemy to be all your civilians, with anyone who's not a cop being a second-class citizen who's either an enemy or at least in the way.
Slashdot Mirror
The liberal ones, if they're really liberal, are not typical American Christians, they're an anomaly and a tiny minority.
The conservative ones aren't totally stupid usually. They're just like the Scientologists: they don't talk about the really crazy stuff around outsiders. And most of them probably *don't* want people imprisoned or executed, yet. They want the laws changed so they're theologically based, out of their favorite Bible passages. Then, of course they're going to want people imprisoned when they start breaking these laws; who *wouldn't* want someone imprisoned who breaks laws? After that, when they've accumulated enough power, they're eventually going to want to execute people who don't follow along. Just look at how little time passed between Germany having a nice, peaceful, liberal Republic (the Weimar Republic), and going from that to the SA and SS and death camps. It doesn't take much to get people to back those kinds of actions. And America's Christians are ripe for it too: look at how they've built up such a huge a persecution complex lately. They all think they're being *persecuted* because gay people are being allowed to get married now. The Germans thought they were being persecuted too (and at least they were actually right: they were being harshly and unfairly punished for losing WWI and their economy was suffering for it), and look what it drove them to do. The exact same thing could easily happen with America's Christians, taking out their frustrations on some minorities or other groups they decide to hate.
Why? To provide an almost invisible disincentive to inadvertent consumption of soda.
Yes, that's the whole idea. If you're served a giant cup of soda, you're likely to drink the whole thing. Whereas if you are served a smaller cup, you'll probably drink all that too, but you're not as likely to bother getting a refill, so you end up drinking half as much. It's basic human psychology.
Sorry if I wasn't clear before: "banning sodas" was a misstatement, they banned large cup sizes.
And then don't pay her. Pay can be withheld for failing to perform functions in the Job Description.
Maybe, but getting the local government to do that is another matter. The Judge doesn't have the unilateral power to force the county to withhold her paychecks. He does have the power to jail her for contempt of court, which she clearly is guilty of. Why shouldn't she go to jail for that? Everyone else goes to jail for it.
And even if they did withhold pay, she'd still go to the job and act illegally. The law of the land is that she must issue licenses to gay couples (as well as straight ones, who she was also refusing to serve!). Why should she be allowed to thumb her nose at the law indefinitely?
It's simple: if part of your job requires you to do something you find immoral, then you need to find yourself a new job. No one is entitled to any particular job.
And I thought conservatives were against make-work programs.... I guess only when they're for Christians.
What would you say to someone whose moral compass requires them to refuse service to black people? Or to refuse a cab ride to a drunk person? Or to sell pork even though your store carries it?
Right, the only motivation anyone has for wanting society to go along with their ideas is religion. That's why we have people who want to ban you from ordering a large soda, smoking a cigarette, homeschooling your kids, using gender pronouns, etc.
Oh please; there's rational arguments for all of those (and rational arguments against them too). Banning sodas comes from an interest in improving public health, same with smoking. Moreso with smoking because of the effects of secondhand smoke, which affects people who didn't choose to harm their bodies. Being against homeschooling is basically the same, the idea being the children won't get a proper education or will be indoctrinated into a crazy religion; the opposite side of course is the idea that parents should have the authority to decide what's best for their kids rather than the State, the State's schools are frequently lousy and don't live up to the promise, not all homeschoolers are wacky fundamentalists, etc. Opposition to gender pronouns comes from wanting to treat everyone equally and not have "institutional sexism"; the argument against is that they don't believe that gender pronouns have such an effect, that changing is impractical, etc.
There are plenty of societies which have realized religious beliefs are a problem and have restricted them. Which of those do you find more free and preferable to the one you live in right now?
Well, ISIS's territory hasn't restricted certain religious beliefs, and it's a hellhole. All the Muslim countries have religion built into society and government, and they suck to live in and have terrible standards of living on average. Meanwhile, western Europe has to some extent, and it has the highest standard of living in the world (especially Sweden, which is probably the least religious).
It's not just ships, it's any organization. Someone has to be in charge. You can't have an organization where everyone can just do whatever they want; nothing would get done.
The problem with religion is that you don't have to have any kind of rational justification for your position, just "it's in the Bible" (with some out-of-context quote).
When you eliminate religion this way, then any position you take has to be justified with some kind of rational philosophy. Take gay marriage for example: what's the reason to not allow it? It's usually religious: "the Bible says it's sinful in this passage here". That's not a justification based on rationality. The only other reason given is "it's unnatural", but that's just plain stupid, because homosexuality has been observed in countless animals, plus we don't live naturally anyway. Driving a car is "unnatural", so should we stop that too? Typing on a computer is as well. But religious thought promotes this kind of illogical thinking.
Even the ancient Greeks were knowledgeable about debating using rational principles instead of just blindly pointing at some book, so we've taken a huge step backwards since then.
I don't know about all this. Yes, it's definitely easier for people to go to a new colony in the Federation, but inhabitable worlds aren't that plentiful; they have multiple episodes about colonists getting into conflicts with others, either some beings who already inhabited the planet, or some neighboring power that had already claimed the planet as their territory. (There's the episode where Data has to convince some colonists to leave their home because the Cardassians are taking it over, due to a treaty between them and the Federation. There's also an episode where Picard's crew finds a young man who was taken by a rival power after a raid by them killed all the colonists he was with and then raised him as their own, and he doesn't want to go back to his birth family on Earth.) There's colonies which are entirely sealed in artificial habitats because the planet is inhospitable (like the one where Picard's crew finds a planet being threatened by some big asteroid's gravity, and Geordi works with a female colonist to improve the tractor beam, using technology from his VISOR, something that wouldn't happen on their world because "defective" children aren't kept there). Most of these colonies in fact seem to be renegades, not officially sanctioned by the Federation, and the Enterprise usually just stumbles over them, only finding some records about them in their archives that are decades or centuries old, with their final location and status unknown. They just go out into space somewhere and squat on a planet, and frequently it turns out it's in contested space somewhere. Some are official, but I believe I remember some talk about there being work to terraform worlds, but it's a slow process and there's only so many of them.
You were talking about *illegal* acts. Arson isn't illegal for religious reasons, it is because it is an act that harms and kills others.
It's irrelevant: the principle is exactly the same. Religionists want their religious principles to be encoded into law, even if they do harm others. Luckily western society tends to be more secular, but the government that, say, ISIS is setting up, is not like this. Christians here in America would like to have a government like that, where unbelievers are imprisoned or executed. Christians in the middle ages were exactly like this.
That's a different universe, the "mirror universe". The laws are different there.
Though sometimes I wonder if we're the ones in the evil mirror universe, and the universe we see in Star Trek isn't a parallel universe.
If you run a business that's open to the public (as opposed to a private-membership club), then you can't discriminate--it's the law. If you don't like that, you shouldn't be in business. It's no different than refusing to serve lunch to black people, or refusing to dispense live-saving medication to black people.
We're not talking about fashion, we're talking about technological devices. People get new phones because new ones have better features and are faster. Just like PCs, this is going to plateau at some point and people won't care about having the latest-and-greatest so much (or we're going to move to something else which obsoletes them, it's hard to say which). Not many people these days give a rat's ass about having the latest PC, but 15 years ago things were entirely different because there was a high rate of advancement those days. These days, PCs aren't improving much at all, except new ones are more energy-efficient. And no one's excited about new versions of Windows.
There is a simple solution to all the melodrama. Have someone fire her ass.... are alwaus calling for public servants to get fired, why not a deadbeat county clerk?
Sorry, but that's utterly impossible. Her job is an elected position; she can't be fired. She has to be impeached (or jailed for contempt, which is what happened). It's like trying to "fire" the President of the US, it can't be done.
Now why the clerk position is elected, I have absolutely no idea. It makes about as much sense as judge positions being elected.
However, there's nothing preventing this bimbo from either resigning, or allowing one of her staff to sign the things. But noooo, she refuses to do any of that, because she says she has to make a stand. She's just like the people back in the 60s who refused to allow interracial marriages.
What the heck are you talking about?
It could be if somebody standardized things, but there is no incentive for car co's to do that.
There's no incentive because no one in their right mind wants a butt-ugly car that looks like it was slapped together with parts from a parts bin. Lots of people actually like nice aesthetics, inside and out, and that means the parts have to be designed for the car to some extent, and to look right together. Also, different companies have different ideas about how things should look, feel, and operate. Germans always want to put the headlight switch on the dashboard, for instance, and Japanese always want to put it on a stalk. It's been like this for decades, so it's not a fad.
Clearly, "the majority" wants a smartphone, even though a feature phone is "enough",
How do you figure? By that logic, a landline phone is "enough", or maybe even carrier pigeon notes are "enough". A feature phone doesn't let me do all kinds of things I can easily do on a smartphone. I can't Skype on a feature phone, among many other things. I can't even text on a feature phone (sorry, I never was any good at typing messages with 0-9 buttons). This is simply a very poor example for you to choose, because smartphones are not a luxury (any more than, say, internet access or telecommunications), they offer features and uses beyond feature phones. If you just want to talk on the phone, sure, they don't do that all that much better, but that's only one of their functions, and personally, one I don't even use that much.
Scarcity, like death, is an enduring reality.
Not really, it depends on what it is. Real estate is the one scarcity that is really enduring. Things like phones can be made in automated factories using cheap materials (we're talking about an interstellar society here; getting raw materials isn't a problem for them). As for holodecks, you're only looking at one small aspect of this society, life aboard a semi-military starship. There's only so much space on a ship, especially one that has to serve military purposes at times and so its design must be constrained for that. No one forced the crewmembers to join Starfleet; there's likely tons of holodecks back on their home planets, where space is much more plentiful.
If you want real-world examples of people being happy with "enough", how about this: you can have any smartphone you want, and as many of them as you want (assume you can't just re-sell them and pocket the cash). You'll probably pick some high-end model, but how many do you want? Probably just one, or maybe two so you can have a spare in case you break the first one. Would you take hundreds of them? Doubtful; what would you do with them? Collect them? Another example: food. If you can have any food you want, and as much as you want, you'll probably take the finest available, but you can only eat so much at a time, so there's no point in grabbing more. So if you have a replicator that can make any food you want, you're still only going to use it a few times a day.
And so much was often unexplored, they had Geordi with his VISOR, but did they explore any other cybernetics? Other than maybe a few episodes with DATA, not really, and even less often with the Borg, though I admit I did not see much Voyager.
No, there was a very obvious anti-cybernetic bent to Star Trek actually: the Borg were shown as evil and inhuman, taking normal humans (or human-like people) and taking away their humanity with the cybernetic implants (many of which seemed to serve little purpose and be gratuitous). Geordi was the only person ever shown with an obvious implant, and it was only because their technology didn't have anything better for replacing his lost vision. Later on (in the movie ST8) he's shown with new eye implants which replace the VISOR, as technology has apparently improved to give him artificial eyes that look pretty close to human eyes. Picard had an artificial heart (which was show in one episode, where he gets stabbed), though that's not obvious from the outside. Basically, the philosophical stance they have is that Federation medical technology mostly only serves to restore humans to normal human function, and that's it; enhanced capabilities seem to be frowned on. So replacing a damaged heart with an artificial heart is OK, giving sight to a boy born blind is OK (and letting him see extra wavelengths seems to be permitted too), but giving people super-strength or whatever is off-limits. ST goes into this many times: with Khan, and also on Enterprise (the show) with the "Augments", and again with Dr. Bashir in DS9, the Federation opposition to genetic engineering is made quite clear: it's forbidden. Sickbay doctors are shown as figuring out how to cure all kinds of maladies (usually gained during contact with aliens), and bringing crewman back to perfect health, but any attempts at improving humans is shown as something to be avoided because there's inevitably going to be all kinds of problems. There's no mention at all of even cosmetic improvements: will Dr. Crusher give you a nose job if she's not busy? Doubtful, though the fact that all the crewmembers are highly attractive does make one wonder.
WTF? You're a fool. The first two seasons of TNG were the worst, especially the first season; crappy writing, annoying characters (Wesley, Pulaski), etc.. Seasons 3-5 were where all the classic episodes happened.
You're probably the only person who actually likes season 1 of TNG.
Yes, there are hints of communism, but note the badges and other indications of rank aboard the Enterprise. People may be equal, but some are obviously more equal.
The USSR had a military too, and people there had ranks just like any other military. That's just how militaries work. Starfleet is a military entity; their mission is largely exploration and diplomacy as well as other tasks (transporting medicines to colonies, disaster relief, etc. The US military does disaster relief from time to time too so this isn't farfetched), but a good part of their mission is military, due to multiple hostile neighboring forces (Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, etc.). Part of their mission is also political. Anyway, the point is, having ranks is part of having a military organization. Every human organization is like this to some degree; some people are leaders, others are followers, and they have some kind of hierarchy. We do this because it's the only thing that works; any time people try a commune without leaders, nothing gets done.
This is totally orthogonal to either money/wealth or equality. People can be equal under the law while still having higher or lower positions or ranks. The Enterprise Captain may have the highest rank, but that doesn't mean he can just rape his yeoman whenever he wants or eject someone from the airlock; he has to follow the law like anyone else, and if he doesn't, his subordinates are allowed to relieve him of duty and arrest him.
You're talking about technological devices. In a post-scarcity society, these things would be basically free, because there'd be no almost cost to make them. With enough automation, the amount of labor in each device would be almost nil (it's getting that way already in our factories), and with the capabilities of a starfaring civilization, the raw materials would be basically free. You're just not understanding the ramifications of a post-scarcity society.
The main things which would be scarce in such a society would be real estate (not everyone can have a beach house in Hawaii, there's only so much room), and intangible things like status and fame (which is why not everyone gets to be a starship captain). Now of course, some things do seem to be scarce in Star Trek society, such as starships and dilithium crystals. But for personal possessions, they don't. There's no reason for someone to stick with an old tricorder or communicator when a robotic factory can pump them out endlessly, unless they just really like the old one better.
At most, an author can raise some interesting questions, or show some possible outcomes, or otherwise promulgate a message. But whether anything functions, they're just making it up.
Well of course they are. It's a fictional TV show that lasts less than 50 minutes, and one of the big goals is to offer some social commentary, not to be a character study. I think it succeeds quite well in its goal.
But I've noticed something about the world today, in my observation, the ones who most strenuously protest that they are being denied their freedoms and choices are actually among those who wish to victimize others.
I feel like I'm being denied my freedom: my religion says that I should steal things whenever I feel like it, and these totally unjust anti-shoplifting laws are infringing that freedom. I'm being oppressed!!!
I wish more people would live-and-let-live today. So much culture seems to be based on denying others their own choices in how to live their lives when those choices are not victimizing anyone else.
Well the problem is obviously religion. Notice that in Star Trek, there really isn't any, except when they visit some backwards planet and there's religious nuts terrorizing people somehow. Otherwise, what rational reason is there to deny other people their own choices in how to live their lives as long as they aren't victimizing anyone? It's simple: because religionists don't like it, and don't want their choices to become popular and spread. We see that today with all the anti-gay-marriage vitriol from the Christians. They just can't stand the idea that other people are marrying who they want, so they want to shut it down and take control of it. These very same people were against interracial marriages a generation or two ago, calling it an "abomination". You'd think it'd be simple: if you don't like gay marriage, don't have one. But that's not good enough for these cuckoos, they want to make sure no one else has a marriage they disapprove of either.
BSG never had proper closure. i.e. How the fuck did StarBuck come back?? How did StarBuck's ship remains on Earth??
I thought it was pretty much implied that Starbuck was some kind of angel or otherwise just sent back by God. Remember, in the last episode, while she was talking to Lee she just disappeared after saying something about her job here being done. I'm not sure what you're talking about with her ship (it's been a while since I saw it). Gaius was indeed a great character.
Extant -- "keep throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks." Writing was horrible. Ethan (A.I.) was mostly shoved aside for Aliens.
I only saw the first 7 episodes I think. I remember something about some weirdness in the space station in Halle's flashbacks, and that's about it.
Lost seemed to jump the shark shortly after the time travel thing. Again, no closure. WTF was the smoke monster??
The was closure, of a sort (as I understand it, I never actually watched the last few seasons): they just suddenly ended it and found out they were dead all along and that this was some kind of afterlife. But yeah, very lame.
Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. American society really does want an authoritarian system of government.
I don't remember those specific episodes, no. But at least there, you can make the case that they were working in the interests of national security; the CIA has been doing not-so-legal stuff ever since they were founded, that's their whole mission basically. But it's one thing for your government to infringe on civil liberties here and there because of national security against a very formidable foreign enemy, and another thing entirely for your local police force to blatantly infringe on civil liberties left and right just to catch some drug dealer or other low-level criminal or really just to make their lives easier because they've been taking too many steroids and they get off on beating people up.
Also, Airwolf wasn't even part of the government, it was operated by a rogue who basically got the government to look the other way in exchange for carrying out some missions for them, with the promise they'd look for his brother, and the threat that he wouldn't tell him where the helicopter was if they just grabbed him; it was kinda like outsourcing spy work.
Yes, the enemy has changed, but it's one thing for the enemy to be a foreign government that wants to destroy your government and seize control in a superpower race to establish domination and hegemony, and quite another thing for the enemy to be all your civilians, with anyone who's not a cop being a second-class citizen who's either an enemy or at least in the way.